


pulling down the pedestal

by Riana1



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen, accidental crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-27
Updated: 2013-08-27
Packaged: 2017-12-24 18:56:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/943471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riana1/pseuds/Riana1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Christine Everhart investigates the Jaeger Program. </p><p>Tendo Choi takes offense.</p><p>Literally.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pulling down the pedestal

**Author's Note:**

  * For [quigonejinn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quigonejinn/gifts).



> Quigonejinn wrote about Christine Everhart investigating the Jaeger Program (http://quigonejinn.tumblr.com/post/59400567934/i-would-give-a-fucking-lot-for-a-hardcore) and her words just inginate a gut reaction that resulted in this.
> 
> I swear on high half of my Pacific Rim fics are because of her.

“Reporters trade in pain. It sells papers. Everyone knows that.”  
― Jonathan Maberry, Dead of Night 

 

Several narratives stumble out of the wake of the newborn world.

One of how a ragtag group of pilots, soldiers, and an entire Shatterdome stood strong against the apocalypse and /won/.

And the others.

***

Tendo Choi does not see red when the Everhart bitch leaves his office. He sees Kaiju blue and nearly rips of the edge of his desk before his eyes twitch over to the picture of Allison, pregnant and holding their son as he wades into the sea for the first time.

Tendo Choi held together the Hong Kong Shatterdome through a firm grasp of logistics, a near catholic devotion to catnaps, and the devil’s own luck.

He pulls up several files on his laptop, then he calls Naomi.

***

Only a third of the files ever reach the public eye, the fallout destroys four dozen politicians, three universities, two regimes, and one particular reporter. The term Sokolov will enter the the Oxford dictionary in a decade as a synonym for muckraker.

If half of the files had been released, the definition would have been under revolutionary.

***  
The exposure ‘Wall of Death’ will run through seven articles.

A few results:

— a memorial will be build commemorating the lives of twenty-seven teenagers who died when a section buckled and fell on a worker’s tent: fifteen died on impact and the rest in the days afterward from infection and lack of medical care.

It is a trailing two ton mass of concrete with bronzed broken limbs scattered beneath and crawling hands reaching out to a stylized figure ten meters away, back to the beseeching scene, fanning out twenty-seven tickets in its two hands.

The words ‘Here are twenty-seven new job openings’ are laid out in red brick at the feet of the statue.

— The popularity of the slur ‘rim-runner’ for the returning inland population exodus to the coasts. An accusation of being a ‘rim-runner’ will torpedo the Democratic candidate in 2030 presidential election and win Green Party candidate Eve Casey the presidency.

— The entire board of directors for Blackrivers Corporation will be assassinated by an firebomb in Philadelphia. Several groups claim responsibility but no arrests are ever made.

— Marshall hits number one on the top ten baby boy names in America and holds it for five years. Raleigh keeps to the top ten baby girl names for eleven. Mako and Mori hold in both for six.

— Three of the UN Representatives quoted in the article on cutting funding to the Jaeger program commit suicide. Four more resign from office and never return to the public sphere.

— Naomi Sokolov wins a Pulitzer three years in a row.

— the explosion of youtube star Travis Beachem to the late night television with his cutting retorts to the Wall of Death debacle including the much quoted,”The brilliance of bureaucracy, folks, lets build a wall to keep the kaiju out- its not like they can swim into the Atlantic.”

—Hannibal Chau emerging as an counterculture icon much like Che. A fad of metal plated shoes sweeps through Europe and most of East Asia for two years. A resurgence comes back in twenty combined with tartan and fedoras.

***

Christine Everhart retires early to Breckenridge Colorado and becomes editor in chief for the bimonthly community newspaper.

She donates all her unpublished research to the University of Colorado at Boulder.

***

Unrecorded: Tendo Choi shares a beer with Herc Hansen on the beach while his daughter naps with Max on a quilt near by.

"I never regretted anything, Herc, but I read the unpublished interviews about Scott, saw all the official reports.." Choi’s voice trails off.

Herc polishes off his beer in one swig.

"Scott was a fucking pig his entire life. Made jokes, looked up girls’ skirts in school, but he was my brother. Always had my back but the Drift doesn’t let you lie. Scott never saw their faces- it was all a collection of body parts, tits, legs, blondes, brunettes," Herc stops and stares at little Nozomi giggling as Max laps at her kicking feet.

"Scott didn’t remember her face. I did."

He turns away from Choi, tossing his empty can into the picnic basket.

"I nearly beat that son of a bitch to death in the lockers afterwards. Stacker pulled me off and took care of the clean-up. No reports, Scott got dismissed from the program and the fucker found eighteen kilos of cocaine in his trunk on a routine traffic stop in North Dakota. You get a longer sentence for trafficking drugs than any kind of assault in the States."

Nozomi begins to fret and Choi pushes the dog away to pick up his daughter, making nonsense noises while cradling her in his left arm.

The conversation peters off to other topics, the World Cup, the new Mars program, but when Tendo Choi waves as Herc off to the road and buckles his sleeping daughter in her car seat before firing up his laptop and cross referencing some dates.

The day Scott Hansen was found with eighteen kilos of cocaine in North Dakota was the day, given the difference in time zones, when eighteen year old Mako Mori visited her father at the Sydney Shatterdome.

Choi snorts and raises a salute to the sea.

Pentecost always did have a pension for pathos.


End file.
